The present invention relates to the transmission of a television signal containing a luminance signal between a transmitting station and a receiving station of a television system, and more particularly to a method for compatibly increasing picture resolution at the receiving station including: (a) effecting planar prefiltering of the luminance signal at the transmitting station and a corresponding planar postfiltering of the luminance signal at the receiving station; (b) effecting offset sampling or offset modulation of the luminance signal at the transmitting station and a corresponding sampling conversion or demodulation of the luminance signal at the receiving station; (c) deriving an additional signal from the luminance signal for increasing picture resolution and reducing the amplitude of the additional signal at the transmitting station and transmitting the additional signal to the receiving station; and (d) increasing the amplitude of the additional signal at the receiving station to an extent corresponding to the reduction performed during said reducing step. Such a method is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 680,292, filed on Dec. 10, 1984, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
In the above-identified application, the offset sampling or offset modulation procedure is utilized to obtain greater detail resolution while maintaining compatibility with existing transmission systems. Undesirable noise components produced by the offset sampling or offset modulation process are reduced in amplitude. However, the measures disclosed in the above-identified application can be used only for the transmission of essentially static television pictures.